McEwen eyed him—­his good looks and his dress, his gentleman’s refinement; and the shaggy white brows of the old miner drew closer together.

“What did you cast me off like that for, George?” he asked.

Anderson turned away.

“Don’t rake up the past.  Better not.”

“Where are my other sons, George?”

“In Montreal, doing well.”  Anderson gave the details of their appointments and salaries.

“And never a thought of their old father, I’ll be bound!” said McEwen, at the end, with slow vindictiveness.

“You forget that it was your own doing; we believed you dead.”

“Aye!—­you hadn’t left a man much to come home for!—­and all for an accident!—­a thing as might ha’ happened to any man.”

The speaker’s voice had grown louder.  He stared sombrely, defiantly at his companion.

Anderson stood with his hands on his sides, looking through the further window.  Then slowly he put his hand into his pocket and withdrew from it a large pocket-book.  Out of the pocket-book he took a delicately made leather case, holding it in his hand a moment, and glancing uncertainly at the figure in the bed.

“What ha’ you got there?” growled McEwen.

Anderson crossed the room.  His own face had lost its colour.  As he reached his father, he touched a spring, and held out his hand with the case lying open within it.

It contained a miniature—­of a young woman in the midst of a group of children.

“Do you remember that photograph that was done of them—­in a tent—­when you took us all into Winnipeg for the first agricultural show?” he said hoarsely.  “I had a copy—­that wasn’t burnt.  At Montreal, there was a French artist one year, that did these things.  I got him to do this.”

McEwen stared at the miniature—­the sweet-faced Scotch woman, the bunch of children.  Then with a brusque movement he turned his face to the wall, and closed his eyes.

Anderson’s lips opened once or twice as though to speak.  Some imperious emotion seemed to be trying to force its way.  But he could not find words; and at last he returned the miniature to his pocket, walked quietly to the door, and went out of the room.

The sound of the closing door brought immense relief to McEwen.  He turned again in bed, and relit his pipe, shaking off the impression left by the miniature as quickly as possible.  What business had George to upset him like that?  He was down enough on his luck as it was.

He smoked away, gloomily thinking over the conversation.  It didn’t look like getting any money out of this close-fisted Puritanical son of his.  Survey indeed!  McEwen found himself shaken by a kind of internal convulsion as he thought of the revelations that would come out.  George was a fool.

In his feverish reverie, many lines of thought crossed and danced in his brain; and every now and then he was tormented by the craving for alcohol.  The Salvation Army proposal half amused, half infuriated him.  He knew all about their colonies.  Trust him!  Your own master for seventeen years—­mixed up in a lot of jobs it wouldn’t do to go blabbing to the Mounted Police—­and then to finish up with those hymn-singing fellows!—­George was most certainly a fool!  Yet dollars ought to be screwed out of him—­somehow.